


Four Mistakes

by Rìgh_Marbh (Righ_Marbh)



Series: Pride of the Summer [5]
Category: Frey & McGray Series - Oscar de Muriel
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-06
Updated: 2019-08-06
Packaged: 2020-08-10 16:09:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 975
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20138239
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Righ_Marbh/pseuds/R%C3%ACgh_Marbh
Summary: Three years later and Adolphus is pretty sure he’s finally snapped.





	Four Mistakes

Five years later Adolphus is finally, finally starting to make some progress. Alright, so there’s been a few setbacks and he’s found more gas leaks, elaborate pranks and auld arsenic wallpaper than he thought he would but he’s still helping people and that’s the main thing.

“I didn’t want you working on this one but I’ve been overruled and I suppose it counts as odd.”

In five years, Adolphus has broadly managed to avoid meeting with Campbell face-to-face like this. Cases tend to appear on his desk and his reports vanish into the ether and they never have to face each other across a desk.

“Aye, I saw. Locked room case, thon violinist wee Reed was working on…I dinnae mind…”

“The Met are sending some prattling idiot up to help you. Seems they think we can’t be trusted to handle our own affairs.”

Adolphus got the message loud and clear. London were sticking their nose in where it wasn’t wanted and who better to wind them up than mad auld Nine-Nails. It wouldn’t be the first time Campbell had sent him off to run interference.

“Do not cock this up, McGray. You’re on your last warning.”

He’d been on his last warning since his first day and Adolphus doubted this would make any difference.

*

His first mistake was assuming he’d have until the next morning to relish the peace and quiet before his colleague arrived.

Sleep hadn’t come easy to him in a long time so when the doorbell rang and the sight of the hazy figure behind the frosted glass sent a shard of ice through his heart, Adolphus blamed it on the lack of sleep.

After three years he’s stopped expecting to see Frey walk back through the door and besides, he had his own keys, he wouldn’t need to ring the doorbell.

So by the time he reaches the door and nearly pulls it off the hinges wrenching it open, the last person he expect to see on his doorstep is Ian fucking Frey, looking for all the world like he’s got that rod of societal expectation shoved firmly back up his arse.

In the time it takes Adolphus’ brain to reboot and realise that no, he hasn’t finally cracked, Frey is looking steadily more and more uncomfortable.

“I would rather not do this on the doorstep.”

His tone borders on accusatory and Adolphus’ second mistake is pretending he doesn’t care.

“Aye well, I’m waiting on some shite-sniffing wee prick fir work so…”

“Yes. That would be me.”

He has to blink at him a few times before the words sink in.

“Away an’ shite.”

“Can we _please_ talk about this inside before I freeze to death?”

He steps aside, lets Frey into the foyer and tries not to think about the fact thatFrey is in his house. Cold and complaining and looking far too put together compared to Adolphus’ rather shabby, disheveled appearance. Three years have done a number on both of them.

Frey stands there awkwardly, as though he expects Adolphus to start shouting at the very least, but Adolphus can barely string three words together in English right now and even in Gaelic the words catch in his throat.

“I did try to call you…I didn’t even know it was going to be you when I got on the train…this has all happened so quickly and…”

His third mistake is not kissing him just to shut him up. If he had then either everything would have been fine or Frey would have swung for him and walked back out the door, never to be seen again. In hindsight, either option would have been better than the mess he allowed to unfold.

Instead of crossing the few steps between than and pinning Frey to the wall and pouring everything he has left into a last-ditch effort to make up for being a fucking idiot and to hell with the consequences, he makes his fourth mistake.

“D’ye ever stop fucking talking?”

It’s pride and frustration and hurt talking now, he knows, and Frey stops stuttering and the shutters come down. For a man who can’t abide the cold, he looks as though he’s made of ice.

Adolphus has never had any talent for precognition himself but he just knows this whole thing is going to be a disaster.

*

He nearly kills Frey three times in the first twelve hours. How he resists the urge to wrap his hands around his throat and just squeeze, he doesn’t know, but it probably has something to do with the fact that somewhere in the back of his mind he remembers how _pretty_ the bastard looked with his throat covered in bruises.

The second day is easier because he slowly comes to realise that this isn’t _his_ Frey. It’s not even a shadow of the stubborn but easily goaded student he’d first met all those year ago. The things that _that_ Frey would have looked at with suspicious curiosity, this one sneers at. The old Frey was all exasperation and good-mannered huffiness and this one had the rule book shoved so far up his arse, Adolphus is surprised he isn’t choking on the pages. The final straw is when he tries to get wee Dr. Reed supplanted ten minutes after meeting him and alright fine, maybe Adolphus is a wee bit fond of the bumbling, blushing graduate they’ve got for a pathologist but the point remains - this isn’t his Frey and it’s so easy to hate him that Adolphus doesn’t even try to bite his tongue.

So when Elgie shows up on his doorstep at three o’clock in the morning in the middle of November, looking as though he’s been thrown from a moving car, Adolphus is only surprised for a handful of minutes before he realises several things at once.


End file.
